Can't You Do Anything Right?
by Blue Zombie
Summary: Johnny and his mother.
1. Chapter 1

"Johnny!" I cringed, hearing my mother call my name. She was pissed off about something, which was pretty much the only time she ever talked to me, or yelled at me. Usually she ignored me. The old man did too, but sometimes he'd hit me.

She yelled my name again and I wanted to just take off. What was the point in ever being here, anyway? But I went over to her so she could just scream at me some more. Pony had told me that when she was really yelling you could hear her clear down to their house, which was great. The whole damn neighborhood would know she was pissed off.

"Yeah?" I said, kind of shrinking away from her. She was so mad, just like my dad would get, they both got so angry. You could see the anger blazing in their eyes.

"Johnny, Jesus Christ, can't you do anything right? I told you to clean this place up, and it's still a mess! I told you to pick up the carton of cigarettes at the store and I don't see any fucking cigarettes-"

"Yeah, but I didn't have any money-"

"Don't give me that shit! I gave you the money! You can't do anything right! Sometimes I really can't stand you, you know that? You're just like your father,"

I lowered my head and just took it, like I'd take a beating. What could I do? There was no arguing with her. She was always right. They both were. I looked at her. Out of my parents it was her that I resembled, I guess. She was small and she had big dark eyes and black hair. My old man, on the other hand, his hair was kind of sandy colored and his eyes were sort of blue. Kind of blue gray, I guess. My parents weren't that old. My mother was 32, and my dad was 34. They were young when I was born, my mother was my age. I couldn't imagine having a kid now. I couldn't hardly take care of myself, never mind someone else. Plus I'd hardly ever talked to a girl, never mind sleeping with one.

She went on, calling me names, and I tried to ignore it, to go somewhere else in my head. I did that kind of a lot, and it wasn't good. It was kind of screwed up. Like if my old man was hitting me I'd kind of think of being somewhere else. So I did that now, I just stopped listening to her and thought of doing other stuff, I thought of maybe going for a fast car ride with Dally or watching a drag race or something, or hanging out with my friends. But I couldn't block it out completely.

She grabbed me, shook me, it didn't hurt or nothing. She wasn't really strong like my old man was. When he grabbed me and shook me I felt it, boy. So I sucked in my breath, wanting to leave, and I would soon. I'd just leave, no matter what she yelled at me or threatened me with. And I wouldn't come home tonight. I'd stay out all night, maybe at someone's house or maybe in the lot, I didn't care, anywhere, just so long as I didn't have to go home. I wondered why she hated me so much, why they both did. But I knew I didn't do shit right, I screwed up at school and even got held back. I screwed up, got in trouble, didn't do nothing right at home, either. Maybe they would have loved a better kid, a smart kid like Pony, maybe. Sometimes I thought it was no wonder they couldn't stand me.

I shrugged out of her grasp and left, even though she was screaming after me, but I'd had enough. It was windy out and I flipped up the collar of my jean jacket, lit up a cigarette. I didn't have any good memories of her, her or my father. Not one good one. How could that be? But they both drank so much, and they had drank for a long time, and when I was little I remember there being days and days with no food and no one was there half the time, and I'd be so hungry. And lonely. And when they were there I was getting hit, even as a real little kid. My father would grab me by the arm and swing me around to spank me. That would hurt my arm worse than anything, it would get wrenched right out of the socket.

I shook my head, wishing things were different, wishing I came from a good family like the socs did. I guessed it didn't matter much. I walked over to the Curtis's, and Ponyboy was on the porch, smoking.

"Hey, Johnny," he said, and he didn't say nothing about my mother screaming her head off at me, even though I knew he had heard her. He heard it all.


	2. Chapter 2

Smoking, doing nothing. I wasn't going home. Me and Pony hung out, walked around, did nothing. Got kicked out of the drug store just because we looked liked hoods, although neither of us ever stole stuff. But it didn't matter what we would or wouldn't do, it just mattered that we looked like we would.

Pony was kinda mad we got kicked out, but I didn't care. At least he didn't call the cops on us, because some of them did. I kicked a rock and watched it roll down the street. It was getting late, the sky was getting dark. Pony would have to go home and eat supper and do homework. Maybe he'd let me stay for supper, there wasn't any supper at my house ever.

"Johnny, you want to eat over at my house?" he said, reading my mind. I nodded and followed him home. Soda and Darry were there, Darry was cooking supper. Darry was a better parent to Pony and Soda than my parents ever were to me. I wanted so much for it not to matter but it did.

Darry made chicken and potatoes and it was the only thing I'd eaten all day. They didn't mind if I ate with them or stayed over. They knew, man, they knew how awful it was at my house. I didn't have to tell them. They'd all seen all the black eyes and the bruises I was always getting. And it was so nice at their house, usually. There was never the anger, the drinking, the thrown furniture, the holes in the walls, the yelling. My old man, he'd get drunk and yell in this hoarse voice, he'd yell and scream at my mother and me and he'd hit both of us, but mostly me.

I wanted to be done with my stupid house and my stupid parents. I wanted to run away, but I wouldn't. I guess I wouldn't run away because it was kind of scary, but also because of the gang. They were enough for me most times.

After supper I went with Pony into his room and watched him do homework. He could really focus on it, it was kind of amazing. He wasn't paying any attention to me as he read chapters of some text books and did papers and all kinds of shit.

I didn't want to feel so jealous of him but I couldn't help it. He was smart, like really smart. He got put up a grade and everything. I really wasn't smart like that. A lot of stuff in school I just couldn't get. I hated that. And reading wasn't so easy, either. I saw Pony read all kinds of stuff, text books and other books for school and any book he got from the library or something, or the novels Darry sometimes read. He didn't know, he didn't understand, how it wasn't that easy for everybody. And even though his parents died, he still had Darry and Soda and he still had a better life at home than I would ever have. I wanted what he had, but I knew I could never have it.

I was falling asleep on his bed. I could hear the T.V. blaring from the other room, and it was quiet in here. He was just doing one homework assignment after another. I didn't do homework. My classes hardly ever assigned it and when they did I just didn't do it. I'd given up on it awhile ago. What was the point of it, anyway? I was probably gonna end up dropping out.

My mother screaming at me today hadn't helped anything. It was always the same. I'd go there and get screamed at or beaten or just ignored. I thought of just killing myself. That seemed a nice easy way out of this mess. Just kill myself, just cut into my wrists with my switchblade and bleed everywhere, until everything went dark.


	3. Chapter 3

I laid back on Ponyboy's bed and thought about it, just killing myself. Everything was shit. School was shit, my parents were awful, everything was just…I don't know. I didn't think I could take much more. I rolled over and covered my face in the bed.

"You going to sleep, Johnny?" Ponyboy said, and I rolled back over and looked at him. He was sitting at his desk with all his books opened and papers in front of him and everything.

"No,"

I sat up and lit up a cigarette, smoked and watched him go back to his schoolwork. I wouldn't even bother with school work, and I guess it was because I didn't get any of it. I was out a lot, I skipped, so it made it hard to follow along.

"Did you hear my mother yelling at me earlier?" I asked him, and he glanced over at me and just by looking at his face I knew he heard. I hated that.

"Yeah," he said, and went right back to all his books and stuff. It was a nice distraction for him. I didn't have that, I didn't have any kind of distraction. It was definitely not school. I hated school. All the teachers treated me like I was just dumb, and a lot of the time I agreed with them. And I never drank or nothing because of my old man, both my parents. They both drank a lot, and just the smell of alcohol bothered me.

I watched Pony flip through pages and write stuff down and I thought about my old man when he was younger, like my age. Maybe he just drank with his friends, got drunk on the weekends, acted like Two-Bit and Dally when they drank, and maybe it had all seemed like so much fun then. It was weird to think of him being my age, even existing before I was born, but of course he did. So maybe Two-Bit and Dal might end up similar to him, drinking because they had to, so they wouldn't get that awful hangover, sending their kid out to the liquor store in the mornings for a pint of whatever whiskey they wanted. And that kid would go or he'd get a beating, maybe it would be the same.

I just needed a break once in a while, a way to get away from it all, but there was no way to do it. There was nowhere to go. I'd go back to my house thinking things would be different like an idiot, because I knew they wouldn't be different.

"I wish I could just kill myself," I said, but I hadn't meant to say it out loud. Pony stopped what he was doing and looked at me in alarm, then he came over to me and I pulled away.

"No, Johnny, you can't do that. You…you can't kill yourself," But Pony didn't understand that I could. I could. I'd always imagined I'd just slice through my wrists, and I knew enough about it that you go the length of them, not across. It works faster that way. And I could do it because my life was miserable. I got beatings at home all the time. For years. Years. It does something to you. It takes something away. Pony had something, some kind of confidence and trust in other people and the world that I didn't have anymore.

"Yeah, I know," I said, wanting to lie to him and tell him I wouldn't do that, wanting to reassure him. But all those words of reassurance weren't quite coming. I looked at him staring at me, that worry in his eyes, and that was nice. At least he was worried, and I knew all the others would be worried, especially Dally. But they couldn't make things up to me, they couldn't take the place of my parents, they couldn't stop the beatings and me getting screamed at and getting ignored. There was just nothing any of them could do about any of it.

"Just, stay here tonight," Pony said, and I wondered if he thought I was gonna go and kill myself tonight. I wasn't, at least I didn't think so. Did he want to keep an eye on me? I squinted at him.

"Pony, I ain't gonna go and kill myself,"

"Yeah, but just stay here anyway, okay?"

And I shrugged, and felt sorry I'd said that and ended up worrying him. I didn't want to be another death for him, like his parents were. So I'd stay here to make him feel better.

"Okay," I said.


	4. Chapter 4

It was late now and Pony was sleeping. I couldn't sleep. Sometimes I couldn't. I just kept thinking of stuff, stuff like how I hated being at my house and I hated my old man and how I couldn't stand my mother. I watched Pony breathe, his mouth open slightly. I couldn't sleep when I thought of how bad I was doing in school and I knew I'd drop out, maybe this year or maybe next year. There was nothing there for me, and then what? Just some dead end job somewhere. Ponyboy was the lucky one, man. He was smart and he had everything in front of him. He'd graduate from high school and he'd go to college and he'd be something. I'd just stay nothing.

I heard the front door open and I heard girls giggling. It was Soda and Steve and their girlfriends. I listened to them make a racket out in the living room, smoked another cigarette, tossed and turned. Finally I drifted off to sleep, restless and uneasy sleep.

"Johnny," Ponyboy was shaking me awake and I jumped away from him, half awake and thinking he was my old man. I always did that, it was a reflex from getting belted at home so much. But I always felt stupid when it happened. It was why everyone thought I was such a nervous wreck.

"Hey, it's just me," he said in this low, kind of soothing way.

"I know," I said, sitting up, reaching for the pack of cigarettes by the bed, shaking one out and lighting it. I took a long drag and tried not to feel like such an idiot.

"Going to school?" he said, digging around in his dresser for some clean clothes. I shrugged, not really wanting to go. He glanced at me and I tried to figure out if he was thinking I should go. He might be. I knew he didn't understand that school wasn't the easy piece of cake for everybody that it was for him. That was because he was younger, he was only 13. But I knew how much smarter than me he was.

"I guess I'll go," I said, and I borrowed some of his clothes. Mine were all slept in and dirty. We were the same size. I looked like I was his age, and I hated that.

School. I hated it. I was stuck in all the stupid classes because I couldn't read so hot, so I got lousy grades on everything. The words, the letters, they'd get jumbled up and look backwards. It took me forever to read something, and if a teacher asked me to read something out loud it was awful. I'd heard Ponyboy read shit out loud, and he read it just like talking.

We walked to school and I wondered if I was going just to please Ponyboy. That didn't make any sense. It would just bug me, all day long sitting in those hot boring classrooms with the teachers looking at me like I'm stupid, and talking about a bunch of stuff that's going over my head.

Yeah, it was a great day at school. A soc shoved me up against a locker. The teachers who didn't ignore me told me about all the stuff I didn't do and told me I might stay back again.

I left early, screw school, man. I just couldn't do it so what was the point? I wandered around, going into little convenience stores until they kicked me out. It was just because my hair was jet black and slicked back and because of my worn out, old clothes. It was Ponyboy's worn out, old clothes. These store owners took one look at me and told me to get out.

I ended up in the vacant lot, pulling out crab grass, kicking rocks, smoking and tossing the cigarette butts out into the road. I sat down near the tree and took out my switchblade, looked at the way it flashed in the sun. I pressed it against my arm and felt how cool it was, almost cold. I wondered how much it would hurt if I slit both wrists, I wondered how warm the blood would feel as it dripped down both arms.


End file.
